TRIESTE – The icebreaker Laura Bassi of the National Institute of Oceanography and Applied Geophysics (OGS) has departed from the Port of Trieste for a mission lasting over 190 days that will take her to Antarctica via New Zealand.

Arrival is expected in mid-November, with the ship returning to Trieste in the second half of April 2026. Recently upgraded through a €4 million modernization programme funded by the Ministry of Universities and Research, the vessel will take part in the 41st campaign of the Italian National Antarctic Research Programme (PNRA).
“The 2025–2026 austral summer expedition of the N/R Laura Bassi will be divided into two phases: the first, focused on supplying the Mario Zucchelli base, will start at the end of November. We will then sail in convoy with the Korean Antarctic project’s icebreaker Araon. The two vessels will alternate along the route to support each other during navigation — meeting at the ice edge in early December. Afterwards, we will return to New Zealand for the second part of the mission, dedicated to five scientific projects, which will continue until early March,” explained Franco Coren, director of the OGS Naval Infrastructure Management Centre.

This year, the Laura Bassi will also transport the precious ice cores of the international Ice Memory project, recognized by UNESCO and promoted by a consortium of European institutions led by the CNR Institute of Polar Sciences and Ca’ Foscari University of Venice. The project’s goal is to create a global archive of glaciers threatened by climate change — a sort of climate memory bank for future generations.
The cores — extracted in 2025 from Grand Combin in Switzerland and in 2016 from Mont Blanc — will travel for over 50 days across two hemispheres to the Mario Zucchelli base, before being flown to the Italo-French Concordia station, where they will be stored at –20°C inside the Ice Memory Sanctuary, a tunnel carved beneath the snow to preserve the samples without environmental impact.

Logistics operations will be coordinated by ENEA, responsible for the cold chain and transport to Concordia, in collaboration with the French Polar Institute Paul-Émile Victor.
Italian missions in Antarctica are funded by the Ministry of Universities and Research and carried out by CNR, ENEA and OGS under the National Antarctic Research Programme.